Politics
Democrats’ approach to Trump this time is much quieter
When President Donald Trump signed the pardons of Jan. 6 defendants, many 2028 Democratic hopefuls didn’t acknowledge it. And few got sucked into an outrage cycle over Elon Musk’s straight-arm gesture during Trump’s inauguration celebration.
This week provided some clues about an emerging approach that’s coming to define Democrats at the outset of Trump’s second administration, firmly breaking with its fury-fueled resistance roots of 2017. Instead, Democratic state and congressional leaders are primarily looking for openings to attack the president, while promising bipartisanship and trying to model a Democratic alternative in the states.
In interviews with more than a dozen Democratic elected officials and strategists, they explained the shift as evidence of a party reorienting itself after sweeping losses and biding its time until public sentiment potentially turns against Trump. That’s because they are in less friendly territory than in 2017. Trump won the popular vote and all 50 states shifted right in 2024. Thirteen House Democrats are now sitting in districts Trump won last November, but another 50 represent seats that Kamala Harris won by 9 points or less. Just a few thousand showed up to protest Trump’s inauguration.
Democrats are “being more measured because people are just so tired, so there isn’t the energy to stay at an 11 for the next four years,” said Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. “My advice is, call it out, be blunt, but don’t shriek about it.”
But for many of the future leaders and possible 2028 Democratic primary contenders, Trump’s pardons and Musk’s gesture — moments that would have inspired public outcry eight years ago — did not draw an immediate public response. Former Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz did not weigh in with statements or on social media. Nor did Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro did address Trump’s pardons when asked by local reporters. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker was a notable outlier, posting on X that Musk’s salute was “outrageous” and criticizing Trump for his pardons.
“Joe Biden is leaving as a very unpopular Democratic president, we lost the popular vote and people are pissed at us over inflation, culture and the border,” Mike Nellis said, a Democratic strategist who worked on Harris’ 2020 presidential primary. “We have to change our tact because we have to earn people’s trust back.”
Confronting this new reality means Democrats are “not going to use the playbook from 2024 or 2017, if I’m looking to run in 2028,” said one Democratic adviser to a potential 2028 Democratic candidate granted anonymity to discuss internal discussions, adding that “if you rush to the cameras every time there’s an outrage, that’s the old playbook.”
“The path to prominence is not in endless resistance headlines,” said an adviser to another potential 2028 candidate. A third operative, who is also close to another prospective presidential candidate, said that “a bunch of 2028-ers are still thinking through what their argument is going to be for how to fix the party, so it’s hard to be out there without a solution in hand.”
But that muted approach has also left a messaging void, which is frustrating some Democrats. One Democratic strategist said it’s “a big concern that we are rudderless” and “there’s a space out there for someone to fill,” but “right now, it’s deafening.”
For some, the silence is a missed opportunity. “If you’re thinking of running for president in 2027, I understand why your advisers are saying, keep your head down and pick your spots,” said one Democratic strategist who worked on a 2020 presidential primary campaign. “No one wants to stick their head up yet, but they’re also over-learning their lesson of 2017 and 2018, worrying about whether the resistance efforts ultimately helped candidates — or didn’t — when they ran for president in 2019.”
The operative argued there is still “grassroots energy” for Democrats, “but they’re not seeing anybody take the mantle.”
Of course, there are exceptions. Chief among them is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who did not attend the inauguration and said in an Instagram video: “Two of probably the most foundational, defining things about American history is that we beat the Confederates and we beat the Nazis,” referring to Musk, who has mocked these accusations. She told comedian Jon Stewart on his podcast that Trump is “much more normalized this time around,” but she argued that working class voters are still being “ripped off” by Trump, “a quintessential New York con man.”
A few argued it’s too early to judge: “It’s been the first week, and it’s such a deluge, but we will, in this tax fight, really find our sweet spot of highlighting how he’s been for tax breaks for the wealthy and not for the working class,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).
Throughout the 2024 general election, Harris and Walz castigated Trump and Musk, and Democrats noted that keeping a low profile after an election loss is not unusual. After certifying the results of the election earlier this month, Harris told reporters that a “peaceful transfer of power” should be something “Americans take for granted,” an implicit reference to the insurrection on Jan. 6.
Walz, for his part, proposed a sales tax cut in Minnesota this month, but hasn’t waded back into national politics. Whitmer, too, pledged to not “go looking for fights” with Trump, but she promised to not “back down from them, either,” in a speech at the Detroit Auto Show last week. Newsom, meanwhile, greeted Trump on the tarmac on Friday when the president arrived for a tour of wildfire damage in Los Angeles, even though he wasn’t invited.
But the party’s broader stasis is also reflected in the contest for Democratic National Committee chair, which has centered on party mechanics over ideology or messaging. The contest’s two frontrunners — Ken Martin, chair of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party — are broadly in line with each other over commitments to building up a year-long campaign infrastructure and reinvigorating state parties across the country.
The bloodless response to the party’s 2024 losses in the DNC chair race prompted Faiz Shakir, a longtime progressive strategist who managed Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, to get into the race. Shakir acknowledged that there’s “a lot of fatigue” for Democrats, but he also said that “there’s a hesitancy to define a Democratic brand right now” — and the tenor in the DNC chair race is an example.
“People are still struggling with the framework of how you challenge Donald Trump for failing to deliver for working people, but the frame is there, right now, it’s — he’s up for auction,” Shakir said, citing the posse of Silicon Valley billionaires who attended the president’s inauguration. “But maybe it’s uncomfortable language for Democrats, who haven’t talked like this for a long time, to talk about the ruling elites.”
Ally Mutnick contributed reporting.
Rhode Island Democratic Gov. Dan McKee became the first governor in eight years in the U.S. to lose a primary, falling on Wednesday to former CVS executive Helena Foulkes and becoming the latest victim of a rough year for incumbents.
McKee’s campaign was bogged down by the botched handling of a years-long project to rebuild the Washington Bridge, which transports more than 70,000 drivers through Providence each day. The project has suffered from delays, cost overruns and disputes between state officials and former contractors that have raised questions about transparency and accountability for the project.
Foulkes spent much of the primary hammering McKee over his handling of the bridge project — a strategy that ultimately proved successful.
McKee had partially closed the bridge in 2023, and estimated at the time that it would fully reopen this summer. But last year, he said the bridge likely won’t be completed until 2028. Construction began in June.
Throughout his campaign, McKee continued to insist that the bridge project was handled well. He told The New York Times in August that “people are going to realize we did the right thing.”
The last incumbent governor to lose a primary was Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer in 2018. McKee’s loss Wednesday adds to the substantial list of Democratic incumbents ousted in primary challenges, though this race didn’t feature the same generational and ideological contrasts as other primaries that have felled Democrats this cycle. Foulkes and McKee, both baby boomers, both ran center-left campaigns.
Foulkes’ victory adds a chapter to her family’s long political lineage. Her grandfather, Thomas J. Dodd, and her uncle, Chris Dodd, were both senators from Connecticut. She worked as an executive at CVS for over 25 years before launching a 2022 run for governor.
McKee won that round, but she got the final word on Wednesday.
DALLAS — Republicans are panicking that President Donald Trump’s policies are drowning out their cost-of-living message — and that it may be too close to the election to fix it.
GOP lawmakers and candidates woke up in Texas on Wednesday to an alarming reality: Trump deepening his trade war with Canada as oil hit $100 per barrel, following new military strikes against Iran.
Publicly, Republicans plan to downplay their latest woes — or blame the Democrats. But several of them at the midterm convention this week are privately strategizing with GOP leaders and Trump administration officials to shore up vulnerable candidates in battlegrounds and in states the president won by double digits in 2024.
Vice President JD Vance is scheduled to address a breakfast Thursday with the delegations from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, where Republicans are eager to hear how he will navigate the party’s economic woes, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter, granted anonymity to share private plans. Others are pushing to use the convention to reclaim the cost of living issue that’s haunting Republicans after it buoyed them two years ago, planning to argue in their speeches that their party can still be trusted to bring down prices.
In a closed-door meeting Wednesday, a group of top senators and candidates in tough races — including Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), North Carolina Senate nominee Michael Whatley and Georgia Republican Senate nominee Rep. Mike Collins — huddled with leaders from the Senate GOP-aligned super PAC met to discuss a battleground map increasingly under pressure as the party tries to fend off voters’ ire around the economy.
“You can’t hide the fact of what the price of gasoline is, we know that,” Collins told Blue Light News in an interview after the closed-door meeting, as he reiterated his support for Trump’s efforts to neutralize Iran as a nuclear threat, arguing that the U.S. has long been at war with Iran but “we’re putting an end to it with this president.”
Many Republicans didn’t want to talk about economic concerns amid the party at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, where MAGA hats cost $47 (a discount from the $55 online) and water went for $8 a bottle.
“We are going the wrong direction,” said one GOP lawmaker attending the convention granted anonymity, like others in this story, to speak candidly of the spiraling economic indicators and the challenges they were creating. “We don’t have a lot of time left.”
Senior Republicans are quietly dismayed about the pileup of Trump economic moves that have rattled voters and key industries in their states — including the worsening trade war with Canada that threatens the auto and farm sectors in the Midwest, his step to import more foreign beef ahead of the midterms that’s infuriated ranchers and farmers from Texas to Iowa, along with spiking oil prices amid the war in Iran that are cutting across the map.
“We’re putting Iowa in play,” one frustrated senior House Republican said on the sidelines of the convention of the Senate map. “We’re putting Texas in play. They shouldn’t be.”
The one advantage they have: money. Battleground Republicans and GOP leaders have been itching for Trump to unleash his massive war chest to help them fend off Democratic attacks over voters’ concerns about gas and everyday costs among the ongoing war. Trump’s orbit started to make good on its promises Wednesday morning, doling out millions in spending for key Senate races through an affiliated Super PAC known as No Going Back PAC Inc., two people with direct knowledge of the matter confirmed.
But Republicans know that campaign funds can’t solve everything.
“We got to talk about the issues that people are dealing with. Families can’t afford their house, they can’t afford the food, they can’t afford health care, they can’t afford child care,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in an interview in the convention hall.
He placed most of the onus on Congress to tackle those issues and cut spending, but admitted Trump’s war with Iran had economic consequences.
“We have higher gas prices now as a result of the president trying to keep us safe as a result of what Iran wants to do,” Scott said. “So that’s hopefully a short-term problem that he’s going to deal with by destroying the regime.”
In a statement, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales argued that Democrats “created the affordability crisis.”
“President Trump has spent every day in office working to undo their mess and lower costs for working families by signing the largest middle class tax cuts in history, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, permanently expanding the child tax credit, fueling wage growth, and reshoring American manufacturing to create more high paying jobs,” Wales said.
Natalie Baldassarre, a spokesperson for the RNC, similarly blamed Democrats for surging prices, adding that “Republicans are cutting taxes, lowering drug prices, and putting money back in families’ pockets.”
Several Republicans plan to use their convention addresses to blame their Democratic opponents for voters’ price pains and argue it’s Republicans who are putting more money in Americans’ pockets — like Mike LiPetri, who’s running to unseat Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi in New York. Others plan to paint a rosier picture of the economy than many voters say is the case right now.
That’s been a hard message for Republicans to sell. An August Blue Light News Poll shows that a 34% plurality of Americans hold Trump fully responsible for the state of the current U.S. economy, compared with just 17% who say the same for former President Joe Biden.
And the very real time crunch — with less than two months until the November election — was a tangible pressure throughout the day in Dallas, as Republican lawmakers, battleground candidates and party officials gathered for what was planned to be a grand event to celebrate GOP accomplishments and drive turnout.
“Look, I think obviously we want to continue to drive down costs, whether it’s energy, whether it is housing, whether it is groceries,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), one of the most at-risk House Republicans in November, said in an interview. “We’re seeing, you know, obviously continued volatility in the oil markets, and we want to bring that down.”
Lawler, who is speaking at the convention Thursday night, touted Trump’s deal over Venezuela oil and largely blamed policy moves by New York Democrats for his state’s higher energy costs.
Trump told reporters Wednesday that oil prices are set to drop amid the ongoing U.S. conflict with Iran — but not until after the midterms, which is much later than those anxious Republicans would hope.
Some GOP hopefuls point to the overall goal to dismantle Iran’s nuclear capabilities as a necessary national security posture. The uptick in oil prices, therefore, is a short-term consequence for a greater long-term foreign policy success.
“We [have] to be patient with the fluctuations, especially with oil and what’s happening in the Gulf now,” said Marty O’Donnell, the Republican looking to unseat Democratic Rep. Susie Lee from her Las Vegas seat.
And the Republicans assembled in Dallas were the ones most likely to support the president — plenty of other lawmakers, including members running in tough races, stayed away, as did some rank-and-file Republicans.
“We have to hope that in six weeks the price per barrel goes down because it’s a big deal,” said one Georgia-based Republican strategist who is not attending the Dallas convention. “The Dems have been beating the daylights out of us on that for a while now.”
A GOP county chair in a region with House races that have been made more competitive by Trump’s unpopularity echoed those concerns.
“There’s no other commodity that when you drive down the street, you see the price,” said the county chair who also wasn’t in Dallas. “I know what gas costs because it’s on a fucking billboard on every intersection, and I’m forced to see it. It’s the most visible indicator of the economy, where we stand.”
And while Republicans are hoping that Trump can get his party’s economic messaging on track in his convention keynote address Thursday, some aren’t holding their breath for a major breakthrough.
“Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe the president delivers a coherent speech that is clear, that is direct, that is policy oriented, that is forward-looking, and they can cut that up in social media and post that up all over the place,” said the GOP county chair. “Will he do that? Absolutely not.”
Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
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